Paris Adventure Part 1

     It's Tuesday afternoon. I have finally recovered from our awesome, exhausting visit to the City of Light, Paris. There is no way to see all of Paris in two days but we did the best we could considering our limited funds and the limited stamina of some of our party. We could have spent a week there and not seen it all. It was an amazing two days nonetheless.
     Friday afternoon Andrew got home at about 5:30. I had everything packed and ready to go. We ate a quick meal of hot dogs and strawberries and we were on the road a little before 6:00 pm. It was a pretty drive through the country with rolling hills and, for a large part of the Germany section, forests on either side. Then we hit France. I thought the border crossing at the Swiss border was nothing - this one really was nothing. There was a police station on one side of the road but no one in sight and we didn't even have to slow down. The only reason I knew we'd crossed the border is because I happened to see a little sign on the side of the road that said "France". It was smaller than the signs in the States that announce when you've crossed into another state! And we were in a different country! Then we started seeing signs in French. It was such a wonderful feeling to be able to understand the writing! I immediately felt more comfortable in France than I did in Germany where almost all the writing and speaking is totally unintelligible to me. Now, I am nowhere near fluent in French but compared to German I can do pretty well. Anyway, back to the trip.
      It was about 8 pm when we got into France but it felt a lot earlier because the sun was still high in the sky. The French section of the drive was mostly driving through farmland with little towns a ways off the highway popping up every now and then. Very calm and peaceful. We saw only one city that could be called largish on the way. But other than that it was lush green farms on either side. Then the sun started to set and it was just lovely. (Note about French roads - not as well kept as German roads. There are barely any bumps or dips on German highways; not so with French roads. Also, many French roads are toll roads. We had to stop 4 times along the way for tolls - about 30 euros total each way!)

The sun peeking through the clouds over the French countryside

      Then we got to the outskirts of Paris. No more calm and peaceful. Chaos - and the GPS seemed determined to show us every backstreet along the way. It is a little after 11 pm now and we are driving through some "interesting" parts of town - sometimes a couple times. Our GPS doesn't show us a little map with the car icon traveling along. It has voice prompts and then a little arrow that points the way she (we named her Gertrude Prudence Schinkleheimer - GPS) wants us to go along with how many meters away that course adjustment is. But with round-abouts and intersections where several streets come together, it is often difficult to figure out where she wants us to go. And she won't tell us if we've done something wrong - no "route being recalculated" announcement - she just gives directions to bring us around in a circle so we can try that turn again. This can be frustrating when you think you got it right and suddenly you're back to the same intersection again! And transferring from one highway to another in Paris is very confusing. There are definite drawbacks to living a city that is several hundred years old - the road system is crazy!
      Our hotel was near the Paris Orly Airport. There was no address to stick in the GPS so we told it to take us to the Orly Airport figuring that we'd see the hotel sign when we got close or perhaps we could use the POI feature and it would find our hotel when we got close enough. That would have worked had there not been two Mercure hotels at the airport! We did manage to get the right one and checked into the hotel about midnight on Friday night. Our hotel room was small. (I think all hotels in Paris have small rooms. The strongest memory I have of the hotel we stayed at in Paris when I was kid was that the rooms were tiny. Basically large enough to fit a bed.) This one had a bed and a desk/dresser and a couch that turned into a bunk bed for the kids. There was just enough floor space to shimmy around the furniture. But it had it's own bathroom and we were the only ones sleeping in the room - two advantages I'd always taken for granted before. So we quickly got to bed and slept.
      The next day, Saturday, we got up at 7:00. Andrew and Taran got dressed and went to investigate breakfast options. Piper and I finished getting ready by the time the boys got back with the news that the breakfast buffet at the hotel was 16 euros per person or a cheaper option was 8 euros for a cup of coffee or juice and a croissant. We decided to find something while we were out. So we made some sandwiches for later, loaded up the backpack with water and snacks and headed out for our first day exploring the wonderful city of Paris.
      Our first destination was Versailles, the magnificent palace built by France's Sun King, Louis XIV. The palace was about a half hour from our hotel. I was hoping to get to the area, find something to eat, get our Museum Pass, and get into the palace soon after 9 am when it opened and spend a few hours looking around there before heading into Paris itself. (Side note on the Museum Pass - we found we could buy a 2 day pass that covers most of the museums and attractions in the Paris area - there are more that 60! The kids got into most of them free so we only had to get one for Andrew and I. We also were able to skip the long lines to buy tickets.) We found breakfast - chocolate croissants - at a little bakery attached to a gas station.

Yummy!

    We found the tourist information and bought our passes. Things were going well. Then we encountered the first incident of what would become the nightmare of our trip to Paris. Parking! We were directed to a parking lot just down the street from the palace. We found a parking spot and then tried to figure out how to pay for parking. The machines that we tried didn't want to work for us. Precious time was ticking away so we gave up there and went back to the lot we'd used when we bought the passes. The downside of that lot was that it had a limit of 2 hours. But if we didn't get in soon we would run out of time to see it at all. So we bought as much time as we could and hiked up to the palace.

Louis XIV - in front of the palace

     When we got to the palace, we discovered that although we got to skip the line to buy tickets, we still had to stand in the line to go through security. And this was a considerably long line. So I read the handy guide book that told what we were about to see and Andrew and the kids did card tricks. Oh, and I took pictures. = )

Piper with a cool fountain

Gold fence in front of palace

The gate and right wing of palace

    A half hour later, we got through security, picked up our audio guides, and started the tour.

In the palace courtyard

Chapel in the palace - see the organ at the end.

Marie Antoinette and her kids

Funny Taran

The ceiling of the chapel - beautiful!

Bust of Louis XIV made when he was 28 years old

King's receiving room - he didn't actually sleep in the bed.

     There were rooms dedicated to the sun, moon, and the five planets that they knew about at that time as well as the Roman gods associated with them. The ceilings were painted with scenes of these gods engaged in the activity they are known for - for example Mars at war and Apollo pulling the sun across the sky (in a chariot pulled, strangely enough, by chickens). I could have stared up the whole tour and been thoroughly fascinated the whole time.

The picture doesn't do it justice - it was breathtakingly gorgeous

Taran enjoyed the ceilings too.

    Then we headed into the famous Hall of Mirrors. This room was built in 1690. Three hundred fifty-seven mirrors decorate seventeen arches across from giant windows that look out onto the gardens. Mirrors were a new production of the French at that time and a luxury item. I think Louis XIV was flaunting his wealth a bit. = ) It was used daily in Louis' time for a hallway and a waiting or meeting place. On special occasions the king would receive diplomatic visitors there. The throne was placed at the far end and the visitor had to walk the length of the room (it is very long) watched by all the members of Court standing on either side. It was also the site of the ball celebrating the wedding of Marie-Antoinette and the Dauphin (prince) who later became Louis XVI. The Treaty of Versailles that ended the first World War was signed in this room. Okay, now we get to the pictures. = )

The ceiling in the Hall of Mirrors

Just magnificent!

Window opposite the mirrors looking into garden

That's us standing in front of the mirror - I took a picture of our reflection

Piper admires the view

Kids at the other end of the Hall of Mirrors

     Then we saw the king's rooms. First was the room that the important nobles, princes and dukes waited hoping to be chosen to help the king dress when he got up in the morning. Then was the king's bedchamber itself. Here was the bed that the French kings actually slept in. And, when they travelled, they'd even take their bed with them. It didn't look that comfortable . . .

King's bed

     Then there was the queen's bedchamber. Marie-Antoinette actually slept in this bed and escaped through that little door on the left when the peasants raided the palace at the beginning of the Revolution.

     The royal dining room came next. There was a table with two chairs on one side and two stools on each end. The king and queen would sit in the chairs with their children or grandchildren on the stools. No one else was allowed to eat with them. Then there was a line of stools further back that the really important noblemen sat on to watch the royal family eat. The lesser nobles had to stand in the back of the room. (Louis was all about showing his superiority.)

Royal table

Stools facing royal table

     In another room was a giant painting of Napoleon crowning Josephine, Empress of France.

This painting covered an entire wall

   We were not able to visit the gardens because they were having a show out there that day that was not covered by our Museum Pass. But I got a few pictures anyway.

Garden right behind palace.

     We ran out of time at that point. We decided to head to Paris instead of seeing the Queen's Palace that was located at the other end of the garden. (We just didn't have enough time to see everything so we had to pick and choose. = ( Oh, well. We'll spend more time at Versailles next time.) So we hurried back to the car and got there about 15 minutes after our time ran out. But our car was still there with no parking ticket so we told the GPS to take us to the Eiffel Tower and set off.

Waiting to cross the crazy French street

   Stay tuned for Part 2 - which will hopefully be posted tomorrow. = )